[ARCHIVED] Can I import/default the timezone for a student or a section

[barbaracoen]

We have students in different countries and if they don't change their timezone they will usually miss tutorials or other events setup in the calendar.  I'm wondering if it's possible to somehow set the time zone for a student (or group/section of students) without having to edit them one at a time.

Anyone else run into this?  We don't have an SIS I'm afraid.

Thanks
Barbara

[James · Accepted solution]

 @barbaracoen  

At face value, this sounds like a very bad idea. Students should keep the timezone set to the timezone they are in rather than you forcing it to be your timezone. If you set it to your timezone, then they are going to see it due at "16:00" (4 pm) and think it's their 16:00, when it is really at (for example) 07:00 (7 am) their time.

When the timezones are set properly, then they see the time in their localtime, which is what they are used to working with. You can set it for 16:00 your time and they will see it at 07:00 their time. They do not ever need to know that it's at 16:00 your time.

You need to find some other way to convince them to pay attention to the time zone or just accept the fact that when you have students in different timezones, it may not make sense to expect them to attend a tutorial on your time.

The answer to your question is "no." There is no way to bulk change the timezone for users. You need to do it one student at a time either through the web interface or through an API call using the edit a user endpoint of the Users API.

One thing you can do is to set the default timezone for your Canvas Instance. This still allows users to override the settings to their local time as it should, but it will set it in one step for everyone who doesn't set it manually. See this lesson in the Canvas Admin Guide for more information: How do I use account settings? 

[tcannon]

I agree that this would be a helpful option! We are a study abroad org, so we want to our students to have the correct time zones of where they will be studying. Instead, it defaults to our time zone and then they have to update it. And as many times as we tell them to do this, some don't, and then they miss deadlines or other calendar things.